To the blogger go the spoilers

Since everyone else is doing it...

I guess I'm the second-worst kind of Harry Potter fan there is, because I read this Washington Post article on spoilers for the books and thought, "You know what? I don't care."

I will have my cell phone on, as always, all weekend as I read. I will be online looking for people to discuss the book with. I don't care if someone driving down 18th Street at 12:05 a.m. yells out the ending of Deathly Hallows from the window of his car. I don't care if someone who steals a copy of the book early walks in front of me wearing a t-shirt pronouncing all the deaths in the book before the release. I am not creating a spoiler-free filter for this journal (though I am not so inconsiderate as to not cut them for a week). I won't be locking entries in which I discuss the book.

Why? Because for me it's about the journey, not the destination.

Let's say Harry dies. I don't know if this will happen, though given the following of the hero's journey tale it's unlikely. But let's say it does. If you want to flip to the end of the book and yell at me, "Hey, Cedar, Harry dies!" you won't get much more than a shrug and an "Oh, really? Okay." To me, it's not about the events of the book, but how we get there. I want to see the process and the battles and the build to the turning events. I want to read all the dialogue and see the alliances and betrayals unfold. I care more about HOW Lucius Malfoy gets out of Azkaban than whether he does or not. So unless you plan to sit in front of me and read the book aloud cover to cover (which I actually wouldn't mind too much, as I love being read to), you're not going to upset me by posting anything about the events of HP&tDH. I am not so fragile as to be upset over the events, or lack thereof, of a book. When you listen to a sports report, you want to hear more than something like "Cubs won, Sox lost." You want to hear about the major plays, the good calls, the questionable calls, etc. It's about how the game got to those final scores, not just about who won or lost. (And really, by the time someone got around to tell me all the spoilers I wanted to hear, told me about the processes that truly interest me, I'd be done with the book because I read pretty fast.)

Feel free to put me on all your spoiler and discussion filters, if you're making them. Spoiler-free people, to me, are like people who drink pulp-free orange juice. It's totally fine for them and I'm glad pulp-free orange juice exists so no one has to be denied their vitamin C goodness. But I want my orange juice to be practically chewable.

(Although I WILL become angry if we never find out why Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters. I still don't trust Sirius's explanation of "Peter was weak" any further than I can throw it.)

Alice In Chains - I Stay Away